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Twitter can be utilized as a very effective social media tool, it can build brand awareness, social interaction, and more, but it can also make the company liable for its employee’s “foot in the mouth” comments. Just in the past year there have been several instances of companies getting negative PR as well as looking ridiculous because of one employee’s tweet. The problem here is that everyone following is usually a fan of the company, so in the end all issues that arise will ultimately harm hot leads.

The first instance was with Chrysler, after pushing its “Imported From Detroit” and American pride angle trying to revitalize the troubled brand it passed its twitter management to an outside company, this came back and really hurt them. One day a employee for the PR company handling the twitter tweeted about Detroits traffic, its drivers and used profanity to completely trash talk the city. Not the best move for a company that takes pride in its Detroit standing.

Next we see Adam Orth, a creative director for Microsoft, not only did he break his NDA over twitter, he used his twitter to talk trash with a friend that in the end was disrespecting all customers that were located in mid-America. Needless to say his tweets and twitter was immediately closed down, and his LinkedIn account was also deleted, Microsoft doesn’t play around.

We come to use twitter as a fun shorthand way of speaking to the masses, and its a great tool, however we often tend to forget the business nature of communication in the process. There are several other high-followed individuals that have over the past year really went into an inappropriate direction and harmed their employers, there will always be damage control, but shouldn’t preventative measures be made to help make things run smoothly?

Twitter is a amazing service that connects users to every facet of the world, but just like traditional means of communication, people sometimes need to think a little more before they speak/tweet out.